Situating automated infrastructure: (Dis)continuities, contingencies and spatialities

In this themed issue, we examine the life and implication of the proliferation of ‘automated infrastructure’ in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, we focus on the ways in which automation of various kinds – in labour processes, commerce and office spaces, border control, and even caregiving – have warped, (re)regulated and securitized the time-spaces in which people live, through infrastructure. While not treating the pandemic as an epochal event, the editorial highlights the significant technological ruptures that it has wrought, arguing that it has initiated an acute re-organization of space that society is still grappling with (if not reeling from). We consider the (dis)continuities of these automated infrastructures in relation to the past, the contingencies in their current use and adoption, as well as the spatialities that result from them. Using the papers in this issue as points of departure, we contemplate how, and why, life after COVID has become more political, uneven, unequal and restless, thanks to a renewed concentration of power in the hands of capital and governments, through automated infrastructure.